MISSOULA -- It isn't enough to boast that Montana has a low unemployment rate, just 3.6 percent as of October 2007, Sheila Stearns, the state's commissioner of higher education, said Friday.

To support a strong economic future, Montana needs better wages.

"We have some problems," she said.

Stearns, the keynote speaker at this year's University of Montana Bureau of Business and Economic Research economic outlook seminar, highlighted the importance of developing a competitive and educated work force.

The 2008 seminar, "The New Ice Age: Investing in a Competitive Educated Work force," began its nine-city circuit at Missoula's Hilton Garden Inn Conference Center on Friday morning.

In 2005, the difference in median earnings between a Montanan with a high school diploma and one with an associate's degree was $3,058, she said.

There are also big differences in salaries between urban and rural areas for the same profession.

Using teachers as an example, Stearns said that in Billings the median annual wage for a teacher was $42,657 in 2006. In rural eastern Montana, the salary for that same job was $31,781.

Stearns stressed that a focus on work-force development is the key to better economic development statewide and to establishing more uniform salaries and preventing work-force shortages.

Among the state's biggest challenges, Stearns said, is finding skilled labor to meet job demand.

That problem won't be solved without a lot of cooperation and teamwork, she said.

"There's an obviousness to the intersection of business, labor, industry and education to develop a competitive work force," said Stearns.

She said higher education is taking an aggressive run at that intersection, starting with recent public and private partnerships that have reduced work-force shortages.

Stearns cited the collaboration between NorthWestern Energy and Montana Tech's College of Technology in Butte to create an in-state lineman training program. The program trains electrical linemen to fill shortages as workers retire.

Another, she said, is the collaboration between Educational Opportunities for Central Montana and Montana State University-Northern to educate nurses in Lewistown.

"Not surprisingly," said Stearns, "Central Montana Community Medical Center is the only hospital in the state that isn't experiencing a nursing work-force shortage."

Stearns said that through cooperative efforts between agencies, the state and the educational system, Montana can develop a labor work force one occupation at a time.

The Montana university system has invested $5.5 million from legislative appropriations in 2007 in a variety of industries that have come up short in the area of training and work-force development.

"We spread it around in areas where shortages were evident," Stearns said.

Last year, she said, the university system invested 17 percent in the construction trades, 25 percent in health care, and 16 percent in developing information technology statewide.

Montana also needs to improve enrollment in graduate education programs.

"We are only above Alaska in terms of the number of students enrolled in graduate studies programs," said Stearns.

Graduate students foster creativity, she said, and sometimes launch companies that set up shop here, offering Montanans higher-paying jobs. Graduate students from the Montana university system started companies like Ligocyte Pharmaceuticals Inc., MPA Technologies Inc., and Montana Molecular all of which offer high-paying jobs.

Stearns said the Board of Regents has discussed waiving nonresident tuition for research students. That's one way to help the state commercialize research and retain technologies, she said.

"Investing in graduate students isn't high on the list of any legislator, but oftentimes, those graduates become important to economic development," Stearns said.